Dead Amazon Sword Plant Leaves

Cutting the leaves does no good - peel them completely off the rhizome and cut the roots to about ~2".

is it bad for the plant itself to just let the dead parts melt off naturally? I know it doesn't look pretty but sometimes I feel like the hands off approach produces the best results

Swords are such hardy buggers it's hard to kill 'em, but..

If there's some green left to the stems, I'll cut back but leave the green. If the leaf is completely dead, I'll peel it back--but I won't force the last bit if it doesn't want to come loose. I'll also thin out the roots (if they're thick) to encourage new, finer root growth.


This scenario is where my big tub of snails comes in handy. I plop the questionable plant in there for a couple days and the ponds/rams/spare nerites happily munch off the dead stuff, leaving only healthy tissue. I had some pennywort that looked like so much slime--but I tucked it in, came back in a week---and found a small bundle of growing roots and a new shoot coming up. (followed shortly thereafter by a pond snail explosion that'll keep my assassins fed for quite some time).